Until last week, it had been more than ten years since I had attended a Southern Graphics Council conference. I just hadn't invested the time in keeping up with the field of official printmaking. This year, with the conference being hosted by Columbia College, the decision to attend was easy. David Jones, Andrew Whatley, and the whole organizing crew did a super job. Special props go to Jennifer Yorke for coordinating the many associated exhibitions. I was happy to help in the small ways I could, and get reacquainted with SGC from the perspective of a minor player in the host institution. That all said, the single panel I managed to attend, Printmaking as a Medium for International Collaboration: Vietnam and China, was on the basic side. It was useful for artists beginning to wonder how international contact and exchange happens, but not terribly useful for those of us who are already engaged in projects at an international level, and are looking to discuss with others the challenges, contradictions, deeper issues that follow. The demos that I peeked in were over full, pretty much as I recall my past SGC experience. Seems like there should either be more demos scheduled or have some cc tv for the overflow crowd. Or, maybe that's just the reality, the way it's gotta be, given the physical limits of bodies around a work table or press, and the marginal benefit of craned necks. I had only about 35 minutes to make the rounds of the vendor fair. The wares on offer were impressive, both gear and finished prints. I was happy to see Tom Huck there flacking his kick-butt woodcut prints. I managed to spend a buck on some amazing washi made by a single-man operation in a small town north of Tokyo, at $15/sheet. Pics of the vendor fair were posted to Printereseting.
There were lots of openings on Friday. I made remarks at the student show, Global Print, and then trekked over to the reception for the sprawling, combined installation of the miniture books show, the Aussie prints show curated by Fred Hagstrom, the International Print Center NY show, and the skateboard graphics show. From there, it was over to the Green Lantern in Wicker Park, from which I didn't leave until late. One of the reasons I stayed for a while was the people and me feeling social.
Roman, Bryce, and Abby from InCUBATE helped with the happy mood. I had fun quizzing Roman and Abby about their masters theses. Anne Elizabeth Moore had Chicago and Providence supporters and collaborators in the room.
Here's a pic showing what Learning Tree became, indoors.
And after it all, you get hungry. Only one place to go.
I just had to get this on record: some people have real nerve. Case in point, one Mister Jake DeSantis, formerly of AIG.
His letter of resignation is a study in arrogance, extreme and unshackled. I respond:
First of all, don't play the martyr for us, trumpeting on about how you were doing this out of duty, working for $1 a year. Buddy, you were overpaid even then. It should have been one freakin Abraham Lincoln cent. For the amounts AIG cost the millions of American tax-paying workers, not to mention the honest (or simply less greedy!) investors out there, you should by all rights be working in a chain gang, digging ditches in the national interest. That is not too strong a sentiment, considering the grandchildren of today's young people will still be saddled with the debts incurred by these bailouts.
And then - of course - you say it was not your fault, nor the fault of anyone in particular. Well, I must say, if you're looking for sympathy and new friends, that is not how to find them. If you are gonna claim innocence and be so close to the damage, then you better name some names. And if your point is that we are all at fault, that the lawmakers didn't do their job, and the public didn't pay attention, well, I must say, ordinary people didn't make millions upon millions, either, but sure as heck are stuck with the bill.
And can we say entitled? So you worked your way into MIT. Big whoop. That means you don't have to fix the mistakes your company - yeah, the one that issued the paychecks - made? That means you get all the extra-special rewards for your good work, but bear no special responsibility? I can appreciate the man's sense of charity, and I know there are lots of groups who can use that bonus money he's giving away. But to somehow think that you still have any say in the matter, given what's owed the public, is simply astonishing.
To those who say to Mister DeSantis stop whining and get a clue, I am with you.
Caroline from Green Lantern sent the notice below. Kevin Haywood, Myriel Milicevic, and I made this print-string-thingy several years ago, called Learning Tree. This will be the first time it will be on display and in action indoors, complete with its own tree trunk (or working representation thereof). Come join for the opening on Friday, 6 PM - 12 AM, with music after 9. All info about this show follows the pic of Learning Tree installed outside.
In Conjunction with the Southern Graphics Council conference , The Green Lantern Gallery & Press is pleased to announce a group show:
03.27.09 - 04.25.09
"Without You I am Nothing,"
curated by Anne Elizabeth Moore and featuring work by Andrew Oesch, Angee Lennard, Agata Michalowska, Dan S. Wang, Myriel Milicivic, and Kevin Haywood, Delia Kovac, DeWayne Slightweight, Karin Patzke, Heather Ault, Jason Tranchida, Jean Cozzens, Laura Szumowski, Matthew Lawrence, Meg Turner, Rob Ray, Sonnenzimmer, Xander Marro.
The opening will be held on Friday, the 27th of March from 6-9; during the opening will be serving a cocktail of the speakeasy variety with live musical performances provided by Helen Money, John Bellows, and DeWayne Slightweight from 9-12 am. A donation of five dollars is suggested to watch the music; BYOB suggested, although there will be some beer available.
In late capitalist America, we've become a bit too used to dealing with our visial culture in a certain way: by viewing it, memorizing it, consuming it. But intrinsically, we know that there are other, more fair ways to respond to the images that mediate our world. Without You I Am Nothing explores two distinct and vibrant worlds of mass-produced, artist-created prompts for cultural democracy, in Providence, Rhode Island and Chicago, Illinois.
These cities, which contain two of the most vibrant screenprinting scenes in the nation, have developed distinct languages for interactive poster-making. Artists in both locales mass-produce (or, sometimes, produce on only a small-scale) images and information that can be manipulated, or shifted, or changed. They are intended not to speak to an audience, but to be susceptible to audience response as well. Without You I am Nothing: Cultural Democracy from Providence and Chicago contains only posters that have one or more of the following elements: stuff that falls off (on purpose), windows, parts that move, space for new information, dials, buttons, removable elements, or other user-controlled, four-dimensional aspects of awesomeness. Simply put, these posters cannot exist without viewers' input.
By linking the poster-making scenes of two different cities, Without You I am Nothing underscores the distinct visual languages developed for each community: Providence's tight-knit group of experimental music-influenced, art-educated poster fans, and Chicago's internationally renowned rock fans used to pristine lines and funny animals.
The print medium is neither site specific nor intrinsically democratic: freedom of the press, after all--the earliest form of mass communication--belongs only to those who own presses. Still, the print medium is the one on which democracy in the US was founded; print-makers have pushed the limits of their medium with innovative design and contents since ink was first put to paper in a desire to communicate with "the masses".
Without You I am Nothing displays a wide collection of new, recent, and downright old works on paper that require more from the viewer than merely reading about, memorizing information on, and attending the event described in the poster. These may be malleable, 3-dimensional, tactile, transient, or somehow otherwise inclusive of elements that can move, deteriorate, or be removed; or bits that must be rubbed, poked, ripped, pressed, wettened, prodded, or yanked to achieve full poster satisfaction. Full poster satisfaction need not be guaranteed each viewer.
--
Caroline Picard
Director of The Green Lantern
1511 N Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Floor
Chicago IL 60622773.266.4234 http://thegreenlantern.org
Expanding working and middle class waistlines in large parts of the midwest have accompanied the rise of the suburban feeding troughs known as Chinese buffets. You know the ones. Strip mall-friendly, often purportedly 'international' in its offerings, and always the best value in town.
There have been some days in Madison when I need Chinese food and that means, from at least the time China Palace closed (and boy do we miss that place), I'm going to have mediocre-to-bad Chinese American fare. So I might as well go to the nearby China Wok Buffet (I mean, as opposed to one of the table service establishments). Their food is at least very fresh, especially during the lunch rush. That makes up for the fact that something like nine out of their twelve protein offerings are some variety of chicken. And plus, it's cheap. Which explains the usual lunch clientele: packs of teens or students, retired folks, and working men who wear shirts with a name patch.
But today I saw something new. Guys with coats and ties, women in office wear, folks from the insurance company, the law office, the accounting firm. People who might have gone not so long ago to the nearby upscale chain Biaggi's for lunch digging into the $6.95 lunch buffet (includes bottomless soda pop). Maybe these folks were part of the mix all along and I just never noticed. But the customers at these particular tables I saw today, they were still fresh either to the buffet or to the concept of a great deal, because they attacked the buffet with an eagerness I've rarely noticed among the regulars. I suppose it is just another example of history's tables being turned by the twists of neoliberal globalization. Where the relationship between China and the West was once encapsulated by the 'rice bowl Christians' in China, so-called because of the two-way exchange missionaries relied on for converts in China, ie conversions in exchange for food, now we have the Chinese buffets in Middleton, Wisconsin, Middle America. This is the capitalist imperative, moving at the speed of light, as fast as electronic orders can be filled on the futures markets, bent by the gravitational forces of biopower (our bodies need fuel, today and tomorrow) and cultural difference (eating is social, the social is cultural).
The suite of large black and white woodcuts by Sandow Birk, by contrast, is definitely worth checking out and spending time examining. The scale is impressive, both on the level of individual prints and the overall suite. So are the evident drawing skills, and the variety of carved textures woven into compositions of depth, figuration, movement. And of course, I am always weak for topical woodcuts. The works in this show together tell a story about the Iraq War from the drumbeats of war through the mustering of force to the invasion of Iraq, the occupation of a land belonging to a hostile populace, to the torture and corruption, and finally, to the shattered soldiers returning to an indifferent state. As in a fable, this series reduces the narrative to its essential tragedy.
But I do question some of the artist's decisions. My biggest objection is that there are too many visual quotations from mass media imagery. Such as, in the prints depicting the torture of prisoners a la Abu Ghraib, an obvious Lynddie England figure makes three or four appearances. Which then begs the question: is this fable-making, that is to say, a way to take control of the narrative, to tell the story from the artist/citizen's point of view, or is it primarily a commentary on the official narrative, as it unfolded in the American media? It could be more clear, one way or the other.
On Thursday I made it to the opening of the Just Seeds' exhibition in the Union Art Gallery on the UWM campus. The Union Art Gallery is one of the most difficult exhibition spaces I know of. The room footprint is highly irregular, the wall surface is that indestructible gray-tan pebbly Seventies concrete, and the ceilings are about twenty-five feet hight. In other words, it'd be a wonderful space for some really ambitious soft sculpture. But for 2-d work, it is sometimes a challenge to simply keep the space from completely overwhelming the art work. The fifteen Just Seeds members triumphed over the space and produced the most natural-feeling installation I've ever seen in that gallery, the conceit being a gallery representation of a crumbling highway overpass. That is to say, what Milwaukee will be one of these days.
On Friday night we went to see a friend’s band at the West Side Club, a middle-of-the-road hangout for the middle-aged. The continuing morphing of Chicago-style blues from black party music to a bland, white, suburban tunage happens in places like the West Side Club. Which is not to say the music is bad. Not at all. But the dancing…well, that’s another story. I was not the only person of color there. I saw an Asian woman, probably Chinese or Korean, with her ‘American’ boyfriend. Or, let’s say ‘guy’ friend, since he appeared to be about fifty-five years old. The sight of her getting down awkwardly on the dance floor to the all-white band’s bluesy growls, with her guy, who was jerking even more awkwardly, totally weirded me out. The sight of me just sitting there nodding my head to the beat of office worker blues probably weirded her out, if she noticed at all.
Late that night we caught The Manchurian Candidate on TCN. I’d never seen it, and my god, I can see why it is a classic. Lots of ripped-off Hitchcockian touches, Sinatra as a mature actor, and paranoia galore. The film’s most oddly dated elements, and yet part of the film’s minimal charm (in contrast to the creepy lovers’ subplots), I must admit, are the Chinese and Korean characters. Dr. Yen, leader of the brainwash team, is a communist Fu Manchu who lectures his Russian co-conspirators on the need to have a sense of humor. I wonder if Blake Edwards got his idea for Clouseau’s and Kato’s apartment fights in the Pink Panther movies from the fight scene between Marco and Chunjin.
Then on Saturday night we finally got around to viewing a dvd we’ve had lying around for a few weeks: Dreamgirls. Good music. Good story. Would have been better if it was twenty minutes shorter.
And from there it was back to TV, and the weekend’s most bizarre view into where we are at, as a nation, in the public discourse on race. We landed on Blazing Saddles on AMC. Minus the word ‘nigger.’ Yes, that is right: AMC now airs one of America’s greatest satirical treatments of race with the word ‘nigger’ edited out. This is a disaster and a tragedy. A disaster, because without hearing the word ‘nigger’ used the way it is used in this movie leaves viewers without any good sense of the satire. Let’s be clear here. It is the racist white folk in the movie who are being made fun of, and in a classic Mel Brooks half-silly/half-sharp kind of way, and the lines that use the word ‘nigger’ are an essential part of the attack! What is there to laugh at, when the very word that in at least one scene repeatedly triggers a viewer’s amusement at the expense of the white townsfolk is gapped out? This kind of petty censorship fashions the use of a word, in this case ‘nigger,’ into a moral problem rather than an intelligence problem. If it is a matter of morality, then the word cannot be used, no matter what. Or, at best, the broadcast guidelines must take into account the most narrow moralism regarding the word—safer to just edit it out. And yet Blazing Saddles makes it so clear that it is an intelligence problem! And it is a tragedy, because the movie is pretty damn funny, and a lot of people now will never know it.
